Data Collection & Privacy Best Practices

Account holders are responsible for making sure their surveys are compliant with privacy laws. If you collect personal data, let survey takers know how you plan to use their data. Also, we encourage you to seek your own legal advice to comply with privacy laws and regulations.

Limit Collecting and Storing Personal Information

To avoid collecting personal data in surveys, make responses anonymous and don't ask for sensitive information, whenever possible.

If you do collect personal information, think about how long you need it and why it needs to be stored in your SurveyMonkey account. Don't store personal information for longer than necessary.

Review the survey data saved in your account regularly and delete it when it's no longer needed.

Tell People How You Handle Data

Sharing your privacy practices with survey takers may help ease their data concerns and increase your response rate.

Describe your privacy practices in a survey introduction or in the email inviting people to take your survey. You can also add a hyperlink directly to your privacy notice. When making use of a feature that leverages artificial intelligence and/or machine learning in SurveyMonkey, remember to be transparent about this usage in your privacy notices. These features are usually clearly marked or you can read about them in this Help Center.

You can use skip logic to disqualify respondents who don't agree with your privacy notice or practices.

Privacy statements often include:

• What personal information you're collecting: Identify if you're making responses anonymous or tracking responses with email address, phone number, or other personal information collected in your survey or stored in your collector.
• How you plan to use the data: Say why you're sending your survey and what you want to do with the data collected.
• Whether you intend to share survey data: Clarify who will have access to the data.
• Whether survey takers can edit their responses: Let people know if they can edit their responses.
• How survey takers can contact you: Include an email address or contact form to get in touch.

TIP! You can link to our Privacy Notice and Security Statement to share how we handle data.